The issue with topology optimisation has always been that, while it could point you toward the optimum end result in terms of rough shape, these results weren’t particularly useful, even with today’s additive manufacturing processes. And to make the most of those benefits, we need a different set of tools to design the subsequent parts. Much of this has been driven by the after effects of the 3D printing hype bubble and although that is dying away now, many organisations have realised that these manufacturing techniques allow more freedom in terms of geometry than more traditional manufacturing methods. The last year or so has seen a growing interest in topology optimisation. Taking its PolyNURBS technology from solidThinking Evolve, Inspire now allows you to create much more manufacturable forms that are functionally rich and easier to process In conclusion The benefit there is that you can then take those forms and run them back through the analysis process to validate your design. What’s interesting is that this sits nicely alongside the geometry modelling tools, which have been inside solidThinking Inspire for the last couple of releases, and allows you to mix both the freeform geometries built using PolyNURBS and more prismatic features. As you do this, the form is built up roughly, but it’s much smoother than you’d expect.Īt any point, you can dive in and adapt the cage to push, pull, rotate and generally tweak the shape to get it to where you want it. The system helps by providing a quick selection of possible sections and fitting the profiles in position. Here you start to layout the prismatic shape as well as use the PolyNURBS tools to dynamically find sections and construct a much more consistent model around that mesh. Once you’ve completed the optimisation routines and arrived at a rough form, you then switch to the Shape environment. SolidThinking Inspire 2016 changes this by including SubD-like modelling tools that have been adapted to enable better looking products to be built by allowing you to quickly snap sections, refine them and generate smooth features from FEA-like mesh.
You then need to do a full redesign using your traditional tools. The result is that topology optimisation is often pitched as a means of gaining inspiration for your next design variation based on analysis and optimisation (hence the name of this product, I suspect). The biggest issue with many topology optimisation tools is that the end result is a CAE-derived mesh - which, if you’ve used such tools, isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing or easy to manufacture. In the Inspire environment, these tools have been built into a new set of operations called “Shape” and the reason you use them is fascinating - so let’s explore. The overall idea is that you use control cages to generate smooth organic shapes (much like sub division or SubD modelling techniques now in many systems), but as soon as you stop editing that cage, the system generates NURBS surfaces rather than requiring some form of conversion. This technology comes directly from solidThinking Evolve, the company’s conceptual design focussed system. While the updates and introductions covered so far are extensions of tools from the previous releases, the big news for this release is the introduction of PolyNURBS. Via GIPHY solidThinking Inspire 2016 – PolyNURBS In terms of simulations that can be incorporated into the optimisation process, the same set of structural tools is available, but this release adds the ability to incorporate buckling analysis into the mix as well. This means you can now add in details of enforced displacements, angular velocity and acceleration, g-loads and temperature. On that subject, the solidThinking Inspire 2016 release also sees an expanded set of constraints. Depending on the part of the icon (you’ll quickly pick this up), you can assign constraints, loads, pressures, torque etc. For example, it’s a single icon for boundary conditions definition. Unlike most systems where the icon invokes a single operation, within solidThinking Inspire each icon has different operations. If you’re new to Inspire, it’s worth spending some time exploring each icon. However, what has changed is that the functions (for reasons that will become clear shortly) have now been separated into different sections for file interactions (import/export), view, geometry, structure and analysis.